Letters
Letters Nat Davis and Angola It’s a shame that Roger Morris’ otherwise subtle and interesting analysis of the factors behind Nathaniel Davis’ resignation (“A Rare Resignation in Protest: Nat...
...It is not careful reporting to suggest that he is a ready lap dog for official liars...
...I would suggest that Fallowsgiven his feelings on the subject-boycott any magazine that accepts cigarette advertising, and stick to The Washington Monthly, where he can be as pious as he wants on the subject...
...You’d enjoy smoking, too, if you smoked Salem...
...We required a warning with respect to the risks of smoking cigarettes, and, in addition, a disclosure of the tar and nicotine content...
...If we are going to criticize the work of these people, however, we ought to be at least as careful as the worst of them are about trying to get the facts of their errors right...
...20036...
...You have caught us in one example of what seems to me particularly silly behavior...
...Weary cowboys light up ’round the campfire...
...Politics are involved in the whole question of smoking, but not ir...
...Nor can I see a serious public-policy argument for stopping them from doing so...
...There is no evidence that cigarette advertising falls into the latter category...
...But Fallows, who seem concerned with hypocrisy, writes for larger magazines such as Playboy and The New York Times Magazine, which do carry cigarette advertising...
...Patent medicine, condoms, dirty books, and other products adjudged to be in poor taste, are routinely denied the “right” of access to advertising space, even though, as MIS...
...In verdant glens, fresh-faced young men and women are pictured, pack of Salem in hand, saying things like this: “I don’t analyze smoking...
...Do we abdicate our role as “the conscience of the [news] business” (Fallows’ flattering phrase) by running such ads...
...I think you are wrong...
...For them, it is a question of maximizing profits...
...Cigarette advertising is legal and everyone in this country, except the very young, is aware of the dangers...
...I enjoy smoking...
...With respect to the Post, I feel that our policy should be to allow advertisers as much latitude as possible to say what they want...
...Its text reads, “If it wasn’t for Winston, I wouldn’t smoke...
...JOHN J. MCCABE Senior Vice President The New York Times [MORE] accepts cigarette advertising because the revenue it brings in helps keep the magazine alive...
...It is unjust to award him an iron wreath for making an error...
...Now we see cancer deaths zooming, the rate of teenage smokers at an all-time high, and the publishing industry claiming it’s powerless to do anything, because cigarettes are legal...
...Fallows writes that no serious notion of fair play is at issue if we turned them down...
...These joint efforts are, I think, the only answer...
...Publishers, editors, and writers who me interested in participating should write James Fallows, The Washington Monthly, 1028 Connecticut Ave., N. W., Washington, D.C...
...One sort of cigarette ad is very hard to fault...
...NORMAN PODHORETZ Editor, Commentary I am sure you know that the editorial columns of the Times have not been easy on cigarette manufacturers...
...I’m not sure I agree at all...
...GEORGE A. HIRSCH Publisher, New Times The author replies: There are two distinctions I would like to make in replying to these letters...
...New Times was the example I cited...
...they puff cigarettes as they take hay through the snow to the herd...
...For some magazines and newspapers, cigarette ads make the difference between success and failure...
...We can assure Richard Pollak that The Washington Monthly has had its moments of fiscal peril...
...The best way to have that impact, and also survive, is to try to put our own house in order-taking the kind of self-policing step we are always urging on the miscreants of the legal and medical professions...
...By the sensible application of collective power, I am sure we could get this element removed...
...Even when the many perils of alcohol are taken into account, there is no other legal act which rivals the repugnance and danger of enticing someone to smoke...
...Since many people will certainly continue to smoke, and since choosing these brands will probably prolong their lives, these ads seem to me to be perfectly proper...
...The only sensible way to deal with these temptations, it seems to me, is to work together in the industry to develop standards for cigarette advertising...
...The Washington Monthly clearly has sufficient financial backing to eschew cigarette advertising...
...And I certainly don’t think that, in accepting them, we demean ourselves “as certainly as if [we J had sold space to a gang rape club or a Mafia recruiter...
...If he wrote only for The Washingtm Monthly, which carries no cigarette advertising, I would applaud his zeal...
...As George Hirsch suggests, individual writers and the publishers of impecunious magazines are equally impotent when they try to act on their own...
...Then publishers could be shamed into refusing the most offensive ads, but could honorably keep their magazines afloat with ads for the safer cigarettes...
...I enjoy Salem...
...This is a difficult question, which I think requires two responses...
...Now, alas, we have all moved up to the Republican income level, joined the tennis club, learned to tell a Bordeaux from muscatel and sit for portraits...
...Individually no one could do this, but cooperatively we The Washington Monthly is willing to help form such a group...
...Nearly half of its four-color ads are from the tobacco industry...
...But most people start smoking not as the result of any rational choice, but because of all the subliminal pitches which the advertising industry has delivered...
...Not profitable, just alive...
...This outraged the cigarette manufacturers, and, to a one, they withdrew their advertising from the paper...
...Publishers have demonstrated time and again that they recognize no absolute right of free speech when it comes to these non-political questions...
...If the Washington media wizards choose to sit for a portrait by Collier and then howl because he has painted them in Picasso style rather than Gainsborough’s, we have a familiar tale of vanity outraged by art, which is more than usually amusing this time because the offended clasS not too long ago still prided itself on its lack of social pretension...
...Faced with a choice between continuing to publish and proudly turning down the ads, the publisher may think that to refuse them would be suicidal moral grandstanding...
...Since then, he has always seemed to me one of the finest examples of what A. J. Liebling admiringly called “the careful reporter...
...Vantage, True, Now, and many others, have been taking this approach...
...Cigarette advertisments are something else again...
...This posture is the quickest way to invite government regulation...
...Marder’s September 1, 1475, story was that “authoritative sources” said that Davis was resigning because he was “plagued by African suspicions that linked him to CIA operations in Chile...
...One is to recognize that for the largest publications, the question does not apply...
...Yet people keep smoking...
...the other, between the dif...
...As a result of this, in mid-1969, the Times established its own standards for the acceptance of cigarette advertising...
...the ads themselves...
...This is the stuff of Moliere, and it is fair game for needle wielders...
...Cigarettes belong in this category...
...Graham puts it, they have been “admitted to public sale in this country...
...In these days of complaint about excessive government meddling, the original reason for the meddling is often overlooked...
...The publisher knows that if he turns down cigarette ads he will save no lives and only kill his magazine...
...Moderate amounts of alcohol will do no harm...
...The country tried a draconian answer to drinking, and having seen the results, abandoned it...
...What you say of the expenses associated with the hospitalization of lung-cancer patients is i n f ~ t e l ytr uer of alcohol...
...As I emphasized in my article, I don’t want the government to outlaw cigarettes...
...It is also why the cigarette-advertising question seems such a perfect illustration of how the government expands its regulatory powers...
...I have yet to hear anyone complain that the rlght of free speech has been diminished because The New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, and the Christian Science Monitor (which I neglected to mention in my article) have refused to run cigarette ads...
...A few other examples, from the more subliminal ranges of the advertisers’ art: .Winston has been running a series of beefcake shots of muscular young men with variations on the theme of “The Box...
...I find it impossible to believe that there is a single reader of the Post who is not aware of the health risks associated with smoking...
...You’d enjoy smoking, too, if you smoked Salem Naturally, the advertising men say they are just emphasizing brand preference, but along with the switchovers from Camels and Newports, ads like these are designed to bring new people into the fold...
...MORE1 does not...
...It wouldn’t work, and besides, those who deliberately decide to smoke have every right to do so...
...Graham, Mr...
...One is between the different kinds of cigarette advertisements...
...Letters Nat Davis and Angola It’s a shame that Roger Morris’ otherwise subtle and interesting analysis of the factors behind Nathaniel Davis’ resignation (“A Rare Resignation in Protest: Nat Davis and Angola,” February) began with a gratuitous slur on Murrey Marder’s integrity as a reporter...
...According to you, more of them are smoking now than when they did not know, or know so certainly, the risks in...
...But it is the right general policy not to close our columns to companies who want to persuade people to do something you or I may not want them to do.KATHARINE GRAHAM Chairman of the Board The Washington Post Commentary runs cigarette advertising, but we also run ads for me Washington Monthly, a product which is probably more harmful to the health of those who consume it than cigarettes...
...The Post has been preqy diligent in warning people of these dangers...
...Example: ‘Winston Box fits more than my pocket...
...This does not mean that we abrogate our responsibility for good taste or fairness...
...But let’s stop playing games...
...And George Hirsch tells us that they make up 25 per cent of the magazine’s total advertising revenue...
...I think the point is clear, that this type of ad is expressly designed to make more people start smoking (or keep them from quitting...
...RUSSELL BAKER The editor replies We agree that Murrey Marder is a highly regarded reporter, but all we said in our article was that he bought a false cover story on the Nat Davis resignation, which he clearly did...
...I hope you will not take this as another illustration of the journalist’s hypersensitivit4i to printed criticism which Tom Bethell discusses in his essay on Barney Collier’s book in the same issue...
...In 1972 the Federal Trade Commission imposed requirements on cigarette advertising in media very similar to the ones that the Times had established in 1969...
...But there is a different kind of ad...
...volved...
...The Cigarette Scandal I read your piece with a great interest [,,The Cigarette Scandal,” by Jarries Fallows, February...
...It does mean, however, that we accept advertising in a wide range of categories, where the message may be in conflict with the editorial opinion of the paper...
...ferent types of free speech...
...There is, of course, a practical side to these questions...
...The Washington Monthly had implied closer to 50 per cent.] I happen not to smoke (like Fallows, I am a marathon runner) and believe smoking is harmful...
...Moderate amounts of tobacco will...
...A brief glance through a newspaper or magazine would reveal UM’s ads for “The Proud Smoke,” or the hearty sportsmen of Tareyton, or the blatant phallic pitch of Max...
...Implication: Buy a box, be a butch...
...I will cheerfully grant...
...We should not permit fraudulent advertising, and we do not accept advertising that is grossly offensive to our readers...
...How come I enjoy smoking and you don’t...
...that the general policy just set forward is not always followed here...
...Virginia Slims, with its famous slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” has attempted to make cigarettes as essential a part of the liberated woman’s posture as a disdain for household drudgery...
...For the rest, the ads pose a painful choice...
...Our reason for accepting the ads is purely economic...
...We have, of course, reported the existence of studies linking smoking and lung cancer...
...I should emphasize once more why I am picking on this perfectly legal product, the cigarette...
...McCabe, and others, to make their advertlsing columns as open as possible, but I think that in this case common sense and intellectual precision demand that a line be drawn, Freedom of political speech is the heart of the First Amendment, but there is no way in which the republic is strengthened, or its values enhanced, when a child is enticed to smoke...
...That is why the act of enticement, though legal, seems to me unworthy of the protection of free speech...
...There is also a female version of the ad...
...Therefore, we do accept cigarette advertising...
...In most cases, the government stepped in because private organizations were not policing themselves and the public was suffering...
...by some estimates half the patients in state mental hospitals are there because of problems associated with alcoholism...
...I do not think there is any medical fact better known to the American public than that cigarette smoking causes an increased risk of lung cancer and may cause or aggravate other diseases...
...I have chosen these examples because, unlike most, they let the text spell out the message...
...Two months later The New York Times got it right when it reported that Davis left because of disagreement with our policy in Angola...
...The individual writer knows that if he boycotts the great majority of magazines all he’ll do is put himself out of business, without making any impact on general advertising policies...
...In deciding to publish our ads, he displays an admirable fidelity to the most hallowed principle of free speech-that the freedom extends to those of different political complexions...
...I think that many writers, and publishers, too, could agree that one form of cigarette advertising is truly noxious-those designed to get people hooked...
...I can only conclude that people who smoke, knowing about the increased risk to their health, do so because they want to...
...Marlboro says very little in its ads, because the pictures say everythng...
...The Post and the limes, Time and Newsweek, will not stand or fall on their cigarette ads...
...These are the ads whose purpose is to make people switch brands, not for the sake of switching, but because another brand will do them less harm...
...If Marder’s first report on the Davis hignation was wrong, too bad, but it would not be the first time a good reporter has -hen successfully lied to by the State Department...
...If cigarette ads had been offered in those moments, we would have been sorely tempted...
...We have reported others purportedly showing connections between smoking and strokes, emphysema, heart attacks, arterial thrombosis, chronic bronchitis, automobile accidents, decreased sexual performance in men, and disease in tomato plants...
...Russell Baker writes “The Observer” column for The New York Times...
...In the last five years, we have published about a piece a week, from one-inch fillers to a three-part series, on smoking and health...
...He may well think that this magazine is the bane of civilized men, but whatever disagreement he has with it is a political disagreement...
...They are commercial ventures, and the objections to them are based not on political disagreements but on grounds of health and safety...
...I admire Richard Pollak’s honesty in putting it just that way...
...I have known Marder’s work since the days of Joe McCarthy, when he and Phil Potter were almost alone in upholding the integrity of daily American newspaper reporting in a storm of lies, slander and character assassination which most of the American press found it easier to succumb to...
...Their purpose is to convince people to smoke...
...I use the current Salem campaign as an example...
...Then it is hell to quit...
...Admittedly, more people smoke than read your articles,, but to the vigilante mind, it is surely the principle that counts...
...Winston Box fits the way I live...
...RICHARD F’OLLAK Editor, [MORE] By our count, cigarette advertising comprises closer to 20 per cent of our advertising pages and 25 per cent of our total advertising revenue...
...Cigarettes are tough, for t o u t men...
...I could go on...
...I enjoy it...
...We, at the Times, have frequently considered whether, regardless of the waming required, we should ban all cigarette advertising from the paper...
...We have concluded that we should not...
...What interests me about your article is Fallows’ personal feeling about cigarette advertising...
...I think not...
...In a sense, he is making his livelihood off cigarette companies...
...Once a product is admitted to public sale in this country, I see no reason its producers should not be permitted to advertise in the Post or elsewhere...
...To infer from this, as Morris does, that Marder is a representative newspack shill for Henry Kissinger, swallowing whole the feedings of that old artful dodger, is simply nonsense...
...However, my position on cigarette advertising is a fairly simple one...
...I respect the desire, expressed by MIS...
...Norman Podhoretz’ letter is a perfect illustration of the second distinction...
...We may not all aspire to sit tall in e saddle these days, but anxieties about masculinity still make this ad pay off...
...In fact, we got ourselves into the somewhat difficult position of editorially arguing that the pub* should be made more aware of the dangers of smoking, while at the same time accepting, without reservation, cigarette advertising...
...It seems to us, particularly in this tendentious time, that the adyertising columns of me New York Times should be available for any legitimate message that our advertisers wish to deliver...
Vol. 8 • April 1976 • No. 2
